On September 20th, the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) inaugured the new Institute of Computational Sciences (Istituto di scienze computazionali, ICS). The ICS provides a unique research environment, where strong competences in modeling, simulation and information science come together in an open and application oriented atmosphere. This “virtual laboratory” will conduct complex simulations with supercomputers and cooperate closely with the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing (CSCS) at the ETH Zurich.

ICS has been presented by the presitend of USI Piero Martinoli, the dean of the information science faculty prof. Mauro Pezzè, the director of the ICS prof. Rolf Krause, prof. Michele Parrinello (USI and ETH Zurich) and the director of CSCS prof. Thomas Schulthess. They presented the reasons for the creation of the new institute and his potential for science, society and economy.

The aim of the institute is the efficient modeling and simulation of nonlinear processes on multiple scales in scientific and biomechanical applications. Current projects include biomechanics, contact problems in elasticity with and without friction, nonconforming domain decomposition methods, nonlinear and non-smooth multigrid methods, parallel nonlinear solution methods, adaptive finite elements for complex geometries, and the coupling of molecular dynamics and finite element discretizations.

Have a look to different media reporting about the inauguration (in Italian):